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Be mindful of the present moment from "summary" of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome)
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own. Not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. That's why you must: Get rid of the judgment without having to get rid of the thought. The thought is, after all, an external thing, like a material object. Get rid of the judgment, and the thought becomes, for you, just what it is by being no more than a thought. Add this: Just as it is an absurdity to get rid of a thought without examining it, so it is to eliminate a judgment without looking at its grounds. But however you manage it, it must be done, if you're to reach the goal: to have the mind that's in a state of constant readiness for whatever may befall it. That's a divine power that will make sure you are, at each moment, what your nature demands. You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant, and certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, 'What are you thinking about?' you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or that. And it would be obvious at once from your answer that your thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones, as befits a social being who lives in accord with nature. You must be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds. It stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, 'How unlucky that this should happen to me.' But not at all. Perhaps say instead, 'How lucky thatSimilar Posts
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